10 things about Palantir co-founder Alex Karp

Alexander “Alex” Caedmon Karp is one of the founders of Palantir Technologies Inc. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, United States, the company specializes in software platforms for big data analytics. 

“We absorb the risk of creating value.”

At The Economic Club of Chicago, Palantir CEO Alex Karp discusses what we have built and what we do for our partners. pic.twitter.com/oycfhPZ6fL

— Palantir (@PalantirTech) May 23, 2025

BIOGRAPHY

Karp is an American businessman and author born in New York City, New York, USA. He is the first child of Jewish clinical pediatrician Robert Joseph Karp and African American artist Leah Jaynes Karp.

Oliver “Ben” Karp is Alex’s older brother. They grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Alex struggled with dyslexia when he was young. Here are 10 more things about him:

1. In 1985, he graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia.
2. In 1989, he graduated from Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.
3. In 1992, he and his classmate Peter Thiel graduated from Stanford Law School in Stanford, California, USA with a Juris Doctor.
4. In 2002, he graduated from Goethe University Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany with a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory.
5. In 2003, he, Thiel, Joe Lonsdale and Stephen Cohen founded Palantir.
6. From 2018 to 2020, he was a member of the board of directors of Axel Springer SE, a multinational mass and online media company based in Berlin, Germany.
7. Until 2020, he was a member of the board of directors of the world’s largest chemical producer Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (BASF), which is based in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
8. He was the first major chief executive officer from North America to meet Ukraine’s sixth president Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
9. In 2024, he supported Kamala Harris, who lost to Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election.
10. On October 2, 2024, he turned 57.

TIMELINE

Alex speaks English, German and French. He is a practitioner of Chen-style tai chi and he enjoys cross-country skiing.

2022

• On June 2, 2022, he had a meeting with Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, Ukraine.

2023

• On September 13, 2023, he sat with Elon Musk during a U.S. Senate bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Insight Forum in the Kennedy Caucus Room on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., USA.
• On December 2, 2023, he named Palantir, Booz Allen and Anduril Industries as the “only three companies that have been publicly pro-Israel on October 7” when he spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

2024

• He is the subject of Klaus Stern‘s documentary film “Watching you – Die Welt von Palantir und Alex Karp”, which was released in Germany on June 6, 2024.
• Frank F. Uribe wrote “ALEX KARP BIOGRAPHY: The Visionary Behind Palantir’s Rise – Shaping the Future of Big Data”, which was independently published on September 10, 2024.
• On December 7, 2024, he spoke on a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley.

2025

• On February 18, 2025, Crown Currency published “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West,” which he co-wrote with Nicholas W. Zamiska.
• On April 30, 2025, he spoke on a panel at the Hill and Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.